One day in the late 1950s I was walking down Old Compton Street, carrying some bongoes which I’d just bought at Doc Hunt’s in Archer Street, when two teenage girls stopped me and said ‘Hey, come and play with the Drifters down the I’s’.

This was the 2i’s (as in ‘two eyes’) coffee shop, at number 59, which I’d heard about, but never been into. (I was actually heading down the other end of Compton Street, to a French newsagent/cafe, to settle down with a café crème and a copy of the satirical weekly, Le Canard Enchaîné).

The girls were obviously well known in the I’s, because we had no problem getting through the cafe area on the ground floor, then down some narrow stairs into the basement where two guitarists, a bass guitarist and drummer were backing a young guy doing his best to sound like Gene Vincent.  I got the nod from the musicians, managed to squeeze onto a few square inches of stage and kept up for 15 minutes or so until the set ended, by which time I was glad to call it a day: I wasn’t used to playing without sticks and my finger-tips were starting to protest.

That was the one and only time I sat in with musicians who went on to become pretty well known. For the Drifters decided to change their name to the Shadows, and the vocalist went on to call himself Cliff Richard.

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What brought this incident to mind was a longish feature in the Observer a couple of Sundays back on how Soho has changed over the years, in particular the way that rising rents are contributing to the closing down of long-established venues.

What Soho has always offered is a range of places to eat and drink.

(Though, oddly, the one I have just remembered, and really miss after all these years, wasn’t actually in Soho at all, but a few minutes walk away, north of Oxford Street, in Charlotte Street: Schmidt’s, a German restaurant which I went to at least once a week when I spent a year studying at London University. Great piled up platters of absolutely authentic north German food served by grumpy waiters only outgrumped  by those you found at Bloom’s in Whitechapel - “Just a bowl of Chicken soup! You call that a meal !” -  Sadly, both of these are no more. The East End branch of Bloom’s disappeared when the area finally changed from Jewish to Bangladeshi; and Schmidt’s restaurant closed down in the 1970s, with the attached deli hanging on for a few months before closing in its turn. Tell me; how can a great city survive without proper German food in the centre! ).

But as well as the cafe and restaurants I recall an area full of little businesses: violin repairers, one-man tailor shops, palmists, you name it.  And, sprinkled around, the various manifestations of the sex trade: porn shops, knocking shops, blue movie joints. Sex, in fact, at the time I’m talking about, was much more in your face, as it were. The streets of Soho were brim full of women, young and not so young, accosting male passers by at just about any hour of the day or night. (I remember feeling a twinge of pleasure the first time I was judged old enough to be approached, though I certainly didn’t take up the offer, then or at any other time).

By the start of the 60s, however, ‘street walking’ had become a thing of the past. The Street Offences Act 1959 made it an offence "for a person (whether male or female) persistently to loiter or solicit in a street or public place”, which drove the business underground, eventually leading to the rash of ‘tart cards’ in public phone kiosks and the euphemistic messages at the entrance to so many buildings in the area.

In recent years Soho, on the surface at least, has become pretty sanitised, like the Times Square area in New York City. The single biggest change had been the efflorescence of gay life in and around Old Compton Street, which has certainly livened things up.

Sadly, however, there are changes going on which are decidedly not welcome, as Laurence Lynch made clear at the end of the Observer piece.

After many years, I was taken to the Colony Room, 41 Dean Street, where I became a member. To me, it was the centre of the centre. I spent a year of my life with Sebastian Horsley, Hamish McAlpine, Ian Freeman and others trying to save it. Change of use was turned down, but the landlord appealed and now the Colony is a one-bedroom flat. It is not the only Soho treasure lost in the past 10 years. Here’s a roll call:

• The New Piccadilly restaurant in Denman Street, voted the joint best cafe in London, demolished to build the Ham Yard hotel complex.

• The Bath House pub, Dean Street, demolished, Crossrail.

• The Black Gardenia, Dean Street, demolished, Crossrail.

• The Astoria music venue, Charing Cross Road, demolished, Crossrail.

• The Intrepid Fox, Wardour Street, world-famous rock pub, now a burger bar.

• The Devonshire Arms, Denman Street, now Jamie’s Italian.

• The Soho Pizzeria, Beak Street, now a burger bar.

• The King’s Head and Dive Bar, Gerrard Street, demolished, Chinese restaurant.

1. •The Lorelei Italian restaurant in Bateman Street, there for about 40 years, replaced by a restaurant that lasted six months.
   

And now it’s the turn of Berwick Street market’s adjoining shops, which are being destroyed to make way for another hotel. Lastly – for now – the plot on which Curzon Soho cinema stands in Shaftesbury Avenue is now being eyed up for Crossrail 2.

              Go to savesoho.com to find out more.